First Amendment Commons^™

Free Expression On Campus: Mitigating The Costs Of Contentious Speakers, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

“If you’re afraid to offend, you can’t be honest.”

“If you offend me, I can’t hear what you’re trying to tell me.”

—overheard on campus

The debate over how colleges and universities should respond to contentious guest speakers on campus is not a new one. A quick look back to the early 1990s, among other times, shows commentators squaring off much as they do today about the tensions between protecting free expression and ensuring meaningful equality.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the issues that contested speakers address are also much the same as they have been for several decades – government action …

The Purpose (And Limits) Of The University, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

Scholars of the university have written volumes about contemporary challenges to higher education. Meanwhile, legal scholars writing about the university have typically focused on its First Amendment dimensions rather than on those challenges. This Article links insights from these two groups of scholars to clarify and defend the purpose of the public university against growing technological, ideological, and cultural pressures. It argues that a better understanding of the relationship between the First Amendment and the public university can help strengthen the coherence of the university’s purpose against growing technological, ideological, and cultural pressures. The connection between the First Amendment and …

Protecting The Silence Of Speech: Academic Safe Spaces, The Free Speech Critique, And The Solution Of Free Association, Trevor N. Ward

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of The Instruction Of Religion Clause Issues In Massachusetts Teacher Education Programs, Matthew E. Henry

Educational Studies Dissertations

The prevailing research, as well as reported complaints of academic, civic, personal, and social harm, indicates that public school teachers do not exhibit the professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes grounded in the religion clauses of the U.S. Constitution. This study investigated how TEPs in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts document their instruction of preservice teachers on religion clause issues as they apply to grade 6-12 content area pedagogy, curriculum, and professional ethos. The institutional documents presented to preservice teachers were collected from four teacher education programs in the Commonwealth. An evaluation tool— synthesized from the leading scholarship and research on the …

Education Funding In Maine In Light Of Zelman And Locke: Too Much Play In The Joints?, Sarah M. Lavigne

Maine Law Review

The United States Supreme Court has struggled with the countervailing directives of the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause for decades. One area in which this battle has been particularly contentious is the issue of public funding of religious schools. On one hand, opponents argue that such funding is an impermissible co-mingling of church and state, thereby violating the Establishment Clause. Meanwhile, proponents of public funding of religious schools argue that, to withhold funding from religious schools would place a burden on those wishing to send their children to religious schools, thereby impermissibly preventing individuals from practicing their faith …

Hate Speech In The Schools: A Potential Change In Direction, Kevin W. Saunders

Maine Law Review

The law regarding free expression and students in the public schools has long been somewhat confused. An early Supreme Court vindication of student speech rights has eroded over the years. Yet, it is perhaps unclear how great the erosion has been and how much of the original recognition still stands. This has left the lower courts rather unwilling to protect school students from hate speech, at least in cases where there has not been a history of such speech leading to disruption or even violence. Only recently has there been some sign of change in that regard, with a few …

Avoiding Deliberation: Why The "Safe Space" Campus Cannot Comport With Deliberative Democracy, Nicholas A. Schroeder

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The State Response To Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier, Tyler J. Buller

Maine Law Review

It’s hard to predict what an average member of the public thinks when he or she hears the words “student newspaper.” Opinions vary. This Article goes beyond that public perception and demonstrates that student journalists across the country are doing work that matters. Student reporters uncover corruption, help hold government officials accountable to taxpayers and the public, and bring to light important issues that would otherwise go unreported. They allow students to develop academically, professionally, and socially. And they give a voice to developing citizens who are often disenfranchised from voting, holding elected office, or otherwise participating in politics and …

A First Amendment Deference Approach For Reforming Anti-Bullying Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the anti-bullying laws and their response to the problem of bullying in light of both the nature of the problem itself, the interventions the laws call for, and the laws’ First Amendment implications. Bullying has many varied, negative consequences, some tragic, and is widespread. Yet, the anti-bullying laws disproportionately focus schools’ responses to bullying on school exclusion, meaning suspending, expelling or otherwise excluding students who bully from school. This is so even though social science literature has found school exclusion ineffective and sometimes counterproductive as a method for addressing bullying. What is more, because much of bullying …

Doe V. University Of Michigan: Free Speech On Campus 25 Years Later, Len Niehoff

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Critical Look At How Top Colleges Are Adjudicating Sexual Assault, Tamara Rice Lave

University of Miami Law Review

This Article examines the procedural protections afforded by the top American colleges and universities. After briefly situating these policies historically, it presents original research on the procedural protections provided by the top twenty universities, top ten liberal arts colleges, and top five historically black colleges as ranked by U.S. News and World Reports. In 2015, university administrators were contacted and asked a series of questions about the rights afforded to students, including the standard of proof, right to an adjudicatory hearing, right to confront and cross-examine witnesses, right to counsel, right to silence, and right to appeal. This Article describes …

Combatting Institutional Censorship Of College Journalists: The Need For A "Tailored Public Forum" Category To Best Protect Subsidized Student Newspapers, Nicole Comparato

University of Miami Law Review

College journalists are in a unique position. On one hand, they are typical college students, attending classes and cheering on the team at all the big games. On the other, they serve as investigative journalists, revealing the university’s deepest flaws on the front page of their newspaper. These roles should not be mutually exclusive, but at an alarming rate, universities are attempting to rid themselves of bad press by censoring their own campus newspapers.

This Note argues that universities can get away with this because of the current structure of the public forum doctrine. This doctrine determines the extent to …

Triggering Tinker: Student Speech In The Age Of Cyberharassment, Ari Ezra Waldman

University of Miami Law Review

This essay challenges the common assumption that public schools have limited authority to regulate cyberbullying that originates and takes place off campus. That argument presumes a level of myopia, clarity, and literalism in the law that simply does not exist. First, even assuming it existed, a geographic requirement is an outdated creature of a pre-Internet age. Cyberbullying poses unique challenges to young people, educators, and schools not contemplated when the Court decided its student speech cases. Second, I argue that a campus presence requirement for regulating any kind of off-campus cyberspeech never really existed, so any suggestion to the contrary …

Censorship By Crying Wolf: Misclassifying Student Speech As Threats, Susan Kruth

University of Miami Law Review

Freedom of expression is at risk at colleges and universities across the country. While campus administrators employ a number of strategies to censor speech they disfavor, this piece explores the trend of justifying censorship and punishment of expression by labeling it a “threat” and citing concerns about safety. In contrast to the kind of speech the Supreme Court has defined as a “true threat,” the expression at issue in the cases discussed here poses no safety risk, comprising political commentary, jokes, and pop culture references. Its punishment both trivializes actual dangers and chills campus discourse. Accordingly, it is imperative that …

Keynote Address, Justice John Paul Stevens (Ret.)

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Education Purpose Limitations, Elana Zeide

University of Miami Law Review

While student privacy has been a public issue for half a century, its contours change in response to social norms, technological capabilities, and political ideologies. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) seeks to prevent inaccurate or inappropriate information about students from being incorporated into pedagogical, academic, and employment decisionmaking. It does so by con- trolling who can access education records and, broadly, for what purposes.

New education technologies take advantage of cloud computing and big data analytics to collect and share an unprecedented amount of information about students in class- rooms. Schools rely on outside, often for-profit, entities …

Schools, Speech, And Smartphones: Online Speech And The Evolution Of The Tinker Standard, Aleaha Jones

Duke Law & Technology Review

Under the Supreme Court’s holding in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, public schools may only restrict student speech where the speech is reasonably forecasted to cause a “substantial and material disruption.” With online forums calling into question who may control speech and forecast its impact, the circuit courts have granted public schools broad authority to monitor, and punish, their students for online activity that occurs off-campus. The Supreme Court recently declined the opportunity to reverse this disturbing trend by denying certiorari for Bell v. Itawamba County. As a result, questions remain unanswered regarding students’ right to free …

Rule Of Law, Activism And Equality: Growing Antisubordination Norms Within The University, 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 249 (2017), Peter Halewood, Donna Young

UIC Law Review

This article examines this recent surge of student activism to determine how it fits within larger social movements and to evaluate how receptive courts and legislatures may be to some of the claims raised by the protests. Significant changes in civil rights laws have often been driven by significant shifts in societal perceptions of and engagement with social justice issues. And importantly, social movements have often fostered the political pressure necessary for social, legal, and political reform. There is the potential for these protests to influence courts and legislatures and shape their interpretations of legal rules in ways that recognize …

Denying Certiorari In Bell V. Itawamba County School Board: A Missed Opportunity To Clarify Students’ First Amendment Rights In The Digital Age, Elizabeth A. Shaver

Brooklyn Law Review

In the last decade, the federal circuit courts have grappled with the issue whether, and to what extent, school officials constitutionally may discipline students for their off-campus electronic speech. Before 2015, three federal circuit courts had extended school authority to off-campus electronic speech by applying a vague test that allows school officials to reach far beyond the iconic “schoolhouse gate” referenced in the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. Two other federal circuits had avoided the issue altogether by deciding the cases before them on other grounds. In 2015, the Fifth Circuit Court …

Professional Standards And The First Amendment In Higher Education: When Institutional Academic Freedom Collides With Student Speech Rights, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines rising tensions between institutional academic freedom and the First Amendment speech rights of college students. Specifically, the friction addressed here occurs when universities enforce external professional standards on students within their curricula. Initially, Part I provides a primer on institutional academic freedom. Part II then contrasts the vastly deferential Hazelwood approach to professional-standards disputes embraced by the Eighth Circuit in Keefe with the somewhat more rigorous ones adopted by the Ninth Circuit in Oyama and Minnesota’s Supreme Court in Tatro.

Wisconsin Law In The Age Of Individualism, Joseph A. Ranney

Marquette Law Review

None

Doe V. University Of Michigan: Free Speech On Campus 25 Years Later, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

I would like to use as the launching pad for my remarks today the 1989 federal district court decision in Doe v. University of Michigan. Doe is the seminal case on campus speech codes and it just recently passed its twenty-fifth anniversary. I thought this symposium would be a good occasion to look back, see where we were, assess where we are, and ask whether we have made any progress. Spoiler alert: the news is not good.

Loving The Sinner: Evangelical Colleges And Their Lgb Students, Elizabeth J. Hubertz

Scholarship@WashULaw

In his Obergefell dissent, Chief Justice Robert wrote: “Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage.” This article looks at one of those hard questions - the relationship between evangelical colleges and their LGB students.

As religious institutions, evangelical colleges have authority to freely exercise their faith. They exercise this freedom by maintaining sexual conduct codes which prohibit homosexual practice or behavior by their students. Despite the existence of these codes, evangelical colleges have, and most likely always will have, sexual minority students. While …

Aid To Education; The Ribicoff Memorandum; Church And State; Law And Morals; Fair Housing Laws; Labor Law; Contingent Fees

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Teacher Blogging Redux: Post With Caution, Charles J. Russo, Marcus Heath

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

In the December 2014 issue of School Business Affairs, this column (Russo 2014) addressed a case from Pennsylvania, Munroe v. Central Bucks School District (2014), that explored the free speech rights of public school teachers who blog on the Internet.

In Munroe, a school board in Pennsylvania dismissed a tenured high school teacher who posted controversial, derogatory remarks about her students and others on her personal blog. The Third Circuit subsequently affirmed that insofar as the blog entries were disruptive to school operations, the teacher’s dismissal did not violate the First Amendment (Munroe 2015).

Munroe highlights the need for school …

Expanding The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Schools (K-12) And The Regulation Of Cyberbullying, Philip Lee

Journal Articles

Cyberbullying has received increasing societal attention in the aftermath of the tragic suicides of some of its youngest and most vulnerable victims — 15-year-old Phoebe Prince from Massachusetts, 13-year-old Ryan Halligan from Vermont, 12-year-old Sarah Lynn Butler from Arkansas, 15-year-old Grace McComas from Maryland, and 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick from Florida.

In this Article, I hope to provide states and their schools better guidance on how to effectively regulate cyberbullying that originates off campus. Specifically, I aim to make four unique contributions to the conversation.

First and foremost, I argue that cyberbullying is so harmful in and of itself that …

Expanding The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Schools (K-12) And The Regulation Of Cyberbullying, Philip Lee

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In a tragic case that received international attention, 15-year-old Phoebe Prince killed herself after being bullied—both physically and online—by some of her classmates. Phoebe had moved to Massachusetts from a small town in Ireland, enrolling as a freshman at South Hadley High School. After a brief relationship with a popular boy in the senior class, the taunting by her classmates began. Some students called her an “Irish slut” and a “whore,” knocked things out of her hands, and sent her threatening texts. Some of the students used Facebook and Twitter to speak badly about her. Phoebe suffered this treatment …

Tinker Tortured: The Scope Of Student Off-Campus Viral Speech Rights In The Federal Circuits, Kevin Nathaniel Troy Fowler

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Benign Prior Restraint Rule For Public School Classroom Speech, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article is a contribution to a symposium on schools and free speech. It advances the claim that the First Amendment doctrines that apply to the classroom should adopt a benign prior restraint rule. In the case of teacher classroom speech, the Garcetti rule should apply where the government’s action in interfering with the speech constitutes a prior restraint—the First Amendment should not reach such interference. In cases where a teacher first speaks and then is later punished for that speech, however, basic notions of due process and the dangers of arbitrary governmental decision making are far more pressing, and …

The "Compulsory School Attendance" Case: Wisconsin V. Yoder, Michael Buchicchio

Akron Law Review

It is an important constitutional doctrine that a law generally constitutional "on its face," may be unconstitutional "as applied" in specific instances. The Amish case marks the first occasion that the Court has clearly articulated that exception in favor of a minority religious group. It would appear that compulsory education laws are-"on their face"--within a state's constitutional powers, but under the facts of this case, the First Amendment requires that the Amish be exempt.